Learn about the study of folklore and its academic discipline at University College Cork
Learn about the study of folklore and its academic discipline at University College Cork
Listen to professors at University College Cork discussing the many facets of folklore, both as a subject of study and as an academic discipline.
University College Cork, Ireland (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
Transcript
STIOFÁN Ó CADHLA: The English word for the discipline folklore was actually coined in 1846, which makes it interestingly the very same age as University College Cork. It's the same age, I could say, as the buildings itself. But the idea is also the same age.
The ideas itself originally goes back to the middle of the 19th century and it refers to such things as popular antiquities, songs, buildings, beliefs, traditions. However, the discipline has only come into the modern university system in Ireland since the 1970s, it's fair to say. And it's since the 1970s, that this department, which is one of two departments in Ireland that studies folklore, the department here in the University College Cork was begun in the late 1970s as well within the Department of History. And over the decades following that, eventually it emerged as an independent department with its own research and teaching and modules and so on and so forth.
MARIE-ANNICK DESPLANQUES: Here, we look at all aspects of tradition and popular culture. We look at belief systems, for instance. We look at how people construct those, whether they're religious or secular. How people will go to holy wells, what costumes they observe and patterns, what relics they leave, what wishes they make. We look at all these aspects
CLÍONA O CARROLL: Students get the opportunity to interact with our urban research center, the Cork Folklore Project. They search the archives for material for their own work, but they also contribute to projects, such as our current interactive mapping project, The Cork Memory Map.
CIARÁN Ó GEALBHÁIN: The Irish folklorist and ethnologist [? O'Donnahar, ?] once defined folklore as the doings and sayings of the common people. And of course, within these things, we would have a broad variety or a wide variety of vernacular narrative, including lengthy fairy tales and other folk tales. And of course, our native Irish hero tales, including tales from both the Finn and the Ulster cycles. Other genres that we study include legends and personal experience narratives, our minarets, riddles, jokes, and all kinds of verbal art. While interested in the past, we're also very interested in storytelling in the present, as evidenced by our research into urban legends, for instance, and our involvement with the online project, The Cork Memory Map.
Ó CADHLA: Folklore itself is an unusual discipline in that it is one of the only, if it isn't the only one, that actually studies people's ordinary, everyday life. From within the home, from the material culture, moving along to people's beliefs, celebrations, festivals, rituals, people's belief-- whether that be associated with formal religious belief and practice, or with informal religious belief and practice, as was commonly-held notion from the 19th century about survivals and evolution and superstitions. Folklore is one of the only disciplines that actually makes these the object of their research, whereas others may be looking at global movements or massive historical movements and ideological movements.
One French historian remarked interestingly that, in the height of the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte, that there were people in France who had never heard of Napoleon. So we have interesting instances of this lack of awareness, if you like, of people's everyday life. So for the last 200 years, you could say, folklore has been strengthening itself as a discipline that is fit and equipped to study everyday life in a very serious manner. Everyday life, popular culture, traditions, customs pastimes, the annual cycle, the main festivals that were pertaining in popular culture, the main rituals in the life cycle, such as like is on the government offices, the births, deaths, and marriages. And all of these customs that help us to understand how people perceive the world and how people perceive time and the cosmos and human life itself and the matters that were important to ordinary people.
DESPLANQUES: I teach a course on blues and Irish traditional music, for instance. I look at musical traditions in their cultural contexts. I'm bringing aspects of it from musicology without necessarily focusing on the musical aspects specifically, but rather on how people use music to express a sense of community, to express a sense of identity. How it relates to their history, to aspects of oral history even.
Ó GEALBHAIN: The quality of research carried out within the department has been acknowledged in various ways over the years, from the pioneering work of one of the founders of department, Professor [? Gearold O' Cralaoich ?] to Dr. [? O'Cadhia's ?] [INAUDIBLE] a work which won the first prize in the [INAUDIBLE] literary competition in 2010. We also publish folk-lore journal, [INAUDIBLE.] It is one of only two academic journals in the Republic of Ireland that publishes exclusively articles and reviews relating to folklore and ethnology. We're extremely proud of the advances the journal has made over the last number of years, and we are very welcoming of post-graduate students that might like to get involved in the process.
Ó CADHLA: It was in the 1970s that the discipline of folklore entered into the Irish university system in University College Dublin in 1971, and just a few years later here in the University College Cork, where we offer two different subjects. One through the English language and one in the Irish language. Around the same time, interestingly in the 1970s, a whole range of ideas started to drift from other disciplines into the discipline of folklore from, for example, social-cultural anthropology, from cultural studies, from all sorts of other interesting disciplines who reinvigorated, if you like, and re-energized the discipline of folklore here in University College Cork and opened up a whole new range of interest for students of folklore.
Folklore is an ideal subject in terms of its interdisciplinary nature, in the sense that it covers an encyclopedic range of topics in actual fact, and those go back into the past. You might be interested in rituals and customs in the 18th century, in the 19th century, for example. You may be interested in rituals, festivals, customs, or belief in the present time itself in either an urban or rural situation. Or in cities or globally as well, because folklore sits very neatly into the range of interests into indigenous cultures, native cultures, popular culture, spreads into the social science interest in folklore and ethnology, and across into social anthropology as well.
We actually have on the campus our own piece of folklore associated with the old part of the university, where the university's crest is set on the ground in tiles. And there is a superstition or a taboo, at least amongst students, that they shouldn't step on the university crest itself, until such time as they've been awarded their degree. Or there could be a sort of a taboo associated with it that perhaps they could even fail to progress in their examinations at the end of the academic year.
The ideas itself originally goes back to the middle of the 19th century and it refers to such things as popular antiquities, songs, buildings, beliefs, traditions. However, the discipline has only come into the modern university system in Ireland since the 1970s, it's fair to say. And it's since the 1970s, that this department, which is one of two departments in Ireland that studies folklore, the department here in the University College Cork was begun in the late 1970s as well within the Department of History. And over the decades following that, eventually it emerged as an independent department with its own research and teaching and modules and so on and so forth.
MARIE-ANNICK DESPLANQUES: Here, we look at all aspects of tradition and popular culture. We look at belief systems, for instance. We look at how people construct those, whether they're religious or secular. How people will go to holy wells, what costumes they observe and patterns, what relics they leave, what wishes they make. We look at all these aspects
CLÍONA O CARROLL: Students get the opportunity to interact with our urban research center, the Cork Folklore Project. They search the archives for material for their own work, but they also contribute to projects, such as our current interactive mapping project, The Cork Memory Map.
CIARÁN Ó GEALBHÁIN: The Irish folklorist and ethnologist [? O'Donnahar, ?] once defined folklore as the doings and sayings of the common people. And of course, within these things, we would have a broad variety or a wide variety of vernacular narrative, including lengthy fairy tales and other folk tales. And of course, our native Irish hero tales, including tales from both the Finn and the Ulster cycles. Other genres that we study include legends and personal experience narratives, our minarets, riddles, jokes, and all kinds of verbal art. While interested in the past, we're also very interested in storytelling in the present, as evidenced by our research into urban legends, for instance, and our involvement with the online project, The Cork Memory Map.
Ó CADHLA: Folklore itself is an unusual discipline in that it is one of the only, if it isn't the only one, that actually studies people's ordinary, everyday life. From within the home, from the material culture, moving along to people's beliefs, celebrations, festivals, rituals, people's belief-- whether that be associated with formal religious belief and practice, or with informal religious belief and practice, as was commonly-held notion from the 19th century about survivals and evolution and superstitions. Folklore is one of the only disciplines that actually makes these the object of their research, whereas others may be looking at global movements or massive historical movements and ideological movements.
One French historian remarked interestingly that, in the height of the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte, that there were people in France who had never heard of Napoleon. So we have interesting instances of this lack of awareness, if you like, of people's everyday life. So for the last 200 years, you could say, folklore has been strengthening itself as a discipline that is fit and equipped to study everyday life in a very serious manner. Everyday life, popular culture, traditions, customs pastimes, the annual cycle, the main festivals that were pertaining in popular culture, the main rituals in the life cycle, such as like is on the government offices, the births, deaths, and marriages. And all of these customs that help us to understand how people perceive the world and how people perceive time and the cosmos and human life itself and the matters that were important to ordinary people.
DESPLANQUES: I teach a course on blues and Irish traditional music, for instance. I look at musical traditions in their cultural contexts. I'm bringing aspects of it from musicology without necessarily focusing on the musical aspects specifically, but rather on how people use music to express a sense of community, to express a sense of identity. How it relates to their history, to aspects of oral history even.
Ó GEALBHAIN: The quality of research carried out within the department has been acknowledged in various ways over the years, from the pioneering work of one of the founders of department, Professor [? Gearold O' Cralaoich ?] to Dr. [? O'Cadhia's ?] [INAUDIBLE] a work which won the first prize in the [INAUDIBLE] literary competition in 2010. We also publish folk-lore journal, [INAUDIBLE.] It is one of only two academic journals in the Republic of Ireland that publishes exclusively articles and reviews relating to folklore and ethnology. We're extremely proud of the advances the journal has made over the last number of years, and we are very welcoming of post-graduate students that might like to get involved in the process.
Ó CADHLA: It was in the 1970s that the discipline of folklore entered into the Irish university system in University College Dublin in 1971, and just a few years later here in the University College Cork, where we offer two different subjects. One through the English language and one in the Irish language. Around the same time, interestingly in the 1970s, a whole range of ideas started to drift from other disciplines into the discipline of folklore from, for example, social-cultural anthropology, from cultural studies, from all sorts of other interesting disciplines who reinvigorated, if you like, and re-energized the discipline of folklore here in University College Cork and opened up a whole new range of interest for students of folklore.
Folklore is an ideal subject in terms of its interdisciplinary nature, in the sense that it covers an encyclopedic range of topics in actual fact, and those go back into the past. You might be interested in rituals and customs in the 18th century, in the 19th century, for example. You may be interested in rituals, festivals, customs, or belief in the present time itself in either an urban or rural situation. Or in cities or globally as well, because folklore sits very neatly into the range of interests into indigenous cultures, native cultures, popular culture, spreads into the social science interest in folklore and ethnology, and across into social anthropology as well.
We actually have on the campus our own piece of folklore associated with the old part of the university, where the university's crest is set on the ground in tiles. And there is a superstition or a taboo, at least amongst students, that they shouldn't step on the university crest itself, until such time as they've been awarded their degree. Or there could be a sort of a taboo associated with it that perhaps they could even fail to progress in their examinations at the end of the academic year.